'AITA for getting my niece to sing an offensive song? She's in trouble at school now.' UPDATED
If there's one thing kids love, it's singing silly songs.
"AITA for getting my niece to sing an offensive song?"
So I (32M) occasionally pick up my niece Sophie (10F) from school when my sister (38F) has to work late. This happens probably once a week and sometimes twice a week when my sister has a busy period in her work. I'm absolutely fine with pick up my niece as I love her very much.
Since Sophie was little, me and her would try and annoy my sister (her mum) by singing popular songs in silly ways, it was just a fun little thing me and Sophie would do. We'd basically change all the words in a song to something like "Meow". So say the song "Hey now, you're an all star" came on, we'd just say "Meow meow, Meow meow meow meow" in the same rhythm as the song.
Sophie would find this HILARIOUS and we had a great laugh doing so. Even my sister would find it funny since Sophie has such an infectious happy laugh.
We've done this for years to the point that when I pick her up from school, we call it "Karaoke time!" and I have a playlist of Sophies' favourite songs.
So to spice things up about a month or two ago, I changed from the meow's and went "Hey Sophie, I'm a robot now" and she was confused and I just changed it to "Beep-Boop" so the same song would be "Beep-Boop, Beep beep beep-boop" and she laughed SO hard and we sang songs saying Beep-Boop the whole way home.
Well last week when I picked Sophie up, I decided to change things again and I went "Hey Sophie, I'm a door bell now" and she again looked at me confused and I started singing "Ding-Dong!" and I never heard her laugh so much in my life. She could barely keep the song going because she just kept laughing. It's always so lovely to hear her laugh so hard.
I dropped her off at home with my sister and she was singing the songs constantly going "Ding dong, Ding ding ding dong!" and my laughed and said "Thank you for that, shes gonna be doing this all night now," I typically say sorry not sorry and head off.
Well...yesterday my sister phoned me up angrily saying she got a call from school telling her to pick Sophie up from school as she has been suspended for the rest of the week.
This is a shock to as Sophie is such a lovely innocent sweet natured girl who would never say or do anything bad. But basically Sophie has decided to do this fun little thing we did into school, but she changed "ding-dong" to "ch*ng-ch*ng." Sophie is completely oblivious to the offensive nature of "ch*ng-ch*ng" and to make things worse, her teacher is half chinese and has taken great offense to Sophie's song.
Sophie is very upset as she doesn't understand why she was told off. My sister is furious with me because she thinks I taught her that and I just feel awful about the whole thing in general. People keep calling me Sophie's aunt. I'm a guy just FYI lol. I put 32M.
The next day OP shared an update.
Just to update you all. My sister has explained to her about the issues. Sophie feels very bad about it. The suspension isn't going on Sophie's files as my sister had a chat with the principal and they all agree that it was just a very unfortunately accident, the suspension has been revoked.
My sister has apologised to me for being angry and I apologised to her too.
The teacher was very cold towards my sister when she went into the principals office and my sister apologised profusely about it and explained the whole car karaoke thing with me etc...
Interestingly....the teacher tried to tell my sister that "time with her uncle may not be good" and my sister disclosed that I'm a loving gay uncle that had no intention of this happening to which apparently the teacher said "ahh he's gay, no wonder there's an issue". Which has caused a very interesting turn in events that I didn't see coming. The teacher is now on absence.
People had a lot to say in the comment section.
ChaosInTheSkies wrote:
NTA. It's a silly little joke, kids like to rhyme things. She didn't know it was offensive, and you didn't teach her offensive language.
Lower-Procedure-8568 wrote:
I think the school is the AH. She is ten and unless she is known as a kid who would do that they all should have talked to her.
Unless her song was "look at me I'm miss Asian teacher ch-ng-ch-ng ch-ng-ch-ng"
NarrowExchange7334 wrote:
Absolutely, I agree with this, she’s ten! They should have sat her down and explained why it’s offensive and found out why she’s singing it.
Whether it was something she overheard or something she just made up and even had a chat with the class about what is acceptable in class and had a chat with her mum. If she continued to do intentionally after that then the teacher would have a right to be upset.
fanofthethings wrote:
You didn’t get her to sing an offensive song. I think what you do with her is adorable. You’re not psychic. How could you predict she would turn ding dong to ch*ng ch*ng? Someone needs to push back on the school because there’s no way she knew it was bad.
Side note: when I was little… like 8 or 9, I heard the phrase wham bam thank you ma’am. I had no idea what it meant but it involved the words thank you…and I was taught manners… so I started saying it randomly to women. 😬😅 I did learn pretty quickly it wasn’t ok to say. 😂
To me you’re NTA.
Skeedurah wrote:
NTA. Kids like to rhyme. Shoot, adults like to rhyme. Once I was hiking with my nephew when he was 4. We ran into some nettles and one brushed against his arm. To take his mind off of the itch, we made up a song about itchies. Next thing I know, he’s singing about itchy-b-chies. He clearly had NO idea. Luckily, his mom and dad have a sense of humor. 🤣
M1ssChaos wrote:
Did the teacher even talk to your niece about what she thinks she said or anything or did she just immediately go off on a child and got her suspended instead of acting like an adult.
The teacher should be at fault here in my opinion getting angry at a 10-year-old she probably misunderstood and didn't even explain anything to or spoke to before getting her suspended. You, your sister, and your niece need to go to the school and demand to speak to the principal and the teacher.